1. Taking a pilot who had flown nothing more advanced than an AT-6 Texan trainer that cruised at 140 miles an hour and putting him in the cockpit of the hottest fighter in the country wasn’t the most optimal way to keep him alive. So the P-38 squadrons received access to the same type of plane Amelia Earhart disappeared in back in 1937. This was the twin-engine Lockheed Electra airliner, which the USAAF called the C-40A. It was docile and straightforward, possessed the same twin-tail configuration as the P-38, and could give a young pilot a good feel for what multi-engine flying entailed. The ’38 squadrons took to sending five or six new guys aloft with an old hand. The greenhorns would take turns sitting in the copilot seat while the others clustered around behind the flight deck to watch. On his first hop on May 11, Dick sat beside Harold Lewis for thirty minutes before giving his seat up to another new guy. Despite having a more experienced pilot in the cockpit to minimize the chance of a greenhorn screwing up, this type of transition training was still very dangerous. The day after Bong’s first twin-engine flight, the P-38 outfit defending Seattle learned that all too tragically when their C-40 went aloft with four rookies. While practicing touch-and-go landings, one of the new guys lost control after slamming onto the runway too hard, collapsing the left gear. They bounced back into the air, twisted into a spin, crashed, and burned. Everyone aboard was killed. At the same time as this accident, Dick was doing touch-and-go landings at Hamilton in the 49th’s C-40. Seven landings later, Lewis deemed him ready for his first P-38 experience.

2. This was particularly true around the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, where USN gunners nearly opened fire on USAAF P-40s on several occasions, prompting many outraged messages between the two services.

1. Word of this day later spread throughout New Guinea. Pilots would ask Dick if he flew under the Golden Gate. Reportedly, he stayed mum on the subject, though in a 1944 interview with Lee Van Atta, he copped to buzzing the house in San Anselmo. General Kenney later created a larger legend out of the day in his book, Ace of Aces: The Story of Fighter Pilot Dick Bong, which opens with Dick looping the loop around the Golden Gate, then tearing down Market Street between buildings. There is no record in the surviving USN documents, IV Interceptor Command reports, IV Air Force records, judge advocate reports, or the surviving records from Hamilton Field of any of this happening. None of the Bay Area’s newspapers reported any of these incidents, and the surviving radio news broadcasts from San Francisco stations make no mention of them either. Clearly, something significant happened that day, but what Dick’s exact role was will probably never be fully ascertained.

2. The surviving 11th Naval District documents located at the San Bruno branch of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) include a variety of disciplinary cases that suggest the pilots were not the only ones causing issues. Included in the reports are drunken brawls on trains, an ensign who held up a bar with his service .45, and a decorated and wounded lieutenant commander who kept exposing himself to Stanford coeds. The latter was sent to a psychiatric hospital on the East Coast.

3. Mangus, who hailed from Portland, Oregon, later mentioned to his family that he flew under the Golden Gate, though he was not specific about the date. Information on John’s life, including excerpts from his letters home in 1942, came from his nephew, Gary Smith.

4. John Mangus wrote home to his sisters of this terrible accident. He was one of the pilots assigned to escort Mitchell’s remains back to Ohio, but he switched with another man in the unit since his sisters were coming down to visit him the following week. It was during that visit he mentioned to them that he’d flown under the Golden Gate with James.

5. The situation in North Africa was so bad for the 49th and its parent 14th Fighter Group that eventually morale collapsed and the unit had to be pulled out of combat in early 1943. Veteran leaders from the 1st Fighter Group were brought in to reform it and the outfit quickly went back into combat. However, this was one of the few times during World War II that a USAAF fighter group was withdrawn from battle and reorganized with new leadership as a result of battle casualties and performance.

1. The accounts of this meeting come from Dick’s letters home to his mom (he mentions the incident in early 1943 in one paragraph), the interview with Lee Van Atta in 1944, and from Kenney’s own accounts in two of his books, General Kenney Reports and Ace of Aces: The Story of Fighter Pilot Dick Bong. The latter was essentially a cut-and-paste of the first pages of the former. In his account, Kenney omits mention of Jump O’Neil being there. Some historians have suggested that all of this was fabricated by Kenney after the war, and that he had not actually met Dick in San Francisco. Dick’s wartime mentions of it confirm that it happened, if not in exactly the same way as Kenney wrote about later.

2. Dick mentioned his punishment in his 1944 interview with Lee Van Atta. Kenney also mentioned it in his two accounts.

1. Bill Runey, who went to school with Barbara and flew with Gerald in combat, was a pivotal source on both. He remained friends with Barbara until her death, and when he passed in 2015, I helped his sons lay him to rest only a few yards from the Civil War memorial in this cemetery.

2. In letters home to Barbara, Gerald referred several times to their meetings in the cemetery. The details come from many interviews with Barbara conducted 1991–2000.

3. Account of the buzzing comes from interviews with Art Johnson, Gerald’s youngest brother.

1. John Huston’s wartime documentary, Report from the Aleutians, captured this peculiar aspect of Adak in color. The scenes are harrowing to watch.

1. The description of Gerald’s relationship with McCorkle comes from interviews with General McCorkle and Gerald’s diary and letters home from Adak.

2. Gerald kept a remarkably detailed diary of his time in the Aleutians. He’d been a prolific journal writer ever since leaving Eugene for the Air Corps in 1941. If he kept a diary in New Guinea, it did not survive.

3. In interviews with General McCorkle in 1996, he did not recall any of this. He said categorically that Gerald did not shoot down any aircraft during his missions over Kiska. However, Gerald’s diary details these first air battles thoroughly, and the contemporary press reports match his personal account closely. He later described and claimed another Japanese floatplane on his final mission over Kiska that had been making passes at a B-24. The squadron and group records are exceptionally thin for this period; there are no Individual Combat Reports or Encounter Reports and no surviving requests for confirmation of victories from the 42nd, as most of the ground echelon was still back in Baton Rouge and the daily duties of running the unit in combat took precedence over paperwork. There are a few mission summaries in the XI Fighter Command documents at NARA, College Park, but nothing that concretely confirms Gerald’s two claims. Gerald always assumed he’d been given credit for those two aircraft and added them to his P-38’s kill board later in 1943–45.

1. Kenney placed Bong at this meeting in Ace of Aces, but that is likely not the case. Bong didn’t see Kenney in New Guinea until late December 1942 and was flying on the day Captain Eddie visited the squadron.

1. The technical bugs plaguing the P-38 are well covered in a series of engineering reports in the V Fighter Command’s records for the period. The list of issues the ground crew struggled to fix is daunting, and it is a tribute to them that they were able to get the 39th into combat. Incidentally, the switch to Savage-made guns did not entirely solve the jams.

1. “Angels” was slang for altitude. One angel = one thousand feet. Angels fourteen meant 14,000 feet.

2. Though this air battle has been detailed in many secondary sources, the fact that the P-38 flights entered the scrap piecemeal hasn’t been well documented. Lynch’s flight was especially outnumbered at the beginning of the fight. Source material for this chapter, including the radio chatter, comes from the 39th Fighter Squadron’s reports, V Fighter Command’s documentation of the mission, which includes some of the personal encounter reports missing from the unit records. Mission reports located at NARA, College Park, in the V Fighter Command records, also proved useful. The chatter was overheard by Army ground units around Buna and recorded in various contemporary accounts. Bong’s own recollections of the mission come from his serialized interview with Lee Van Atta in 1944 and his letters home. Contemporary newspaper accounts—Bill Boni’s article in particular—rounded out the sources.

1. Off the record, several 49th veterans mentioned this story to me. The only place it survived in print is in the 49th Fighter Group unit history, Protect & Avenge. It is not mentioned in the records from the 39th. While Kenney and Whitehead probably would have gone to see the 39th anyway, it may be they got wind of the dustup and went to go investigate themselves. Officially, it was never pushed up the chain of command, though several other much more egregious friendly fire incidents later were.

2. There have been many efforts by outstanding historians to document who shot down whom on any given day during the air campaign in the SWPA. Both sides wildly exaggerated victories. What matters in Race of Aces is what the airmen thought at the time. The kill claims and victories used here are the ones officially recorded in the moment. Where it is important, the postwar conclusions are mentioned, but the context of the time is what mattered to the race.

1. A copy of Lane’s diary is on display at the Nampa, Idaho, Warhawk Air Museum.

1. A Form Five was the USAAF’s official flight record. Pilots kept personal logs, but every month they submitted their flight hours on these Form Fives and had them signed by a squadron clerk or officer. They were then sent up the chain of command. Many of the Form Fives survived the war, were put onto microfilm, and endured repeated moves from base to base before landing in the National Archives system.

1. This incident was related in Charles Martin’s excellent biography of McGuire, The Last Great Ace, but more as an antic and less as a key moment with McGuire’s new unit that played a significant role in his future later that spring.

1. The 80th was known as the Headhunters. After flying P-39s and P-40s through much of 1942 and ’43, V Fighter Command finally had enough P-38s on hand to convert them. The Headhunters went on to become one of the most aggressive, best-led, and highest-scoring units in the USAAF. Over the next two years, the 80th and 9th consistently battled it out for top-scoring honors in theater.

2. It took Allied intelligence time to realize the Ki-61 was an entirely different, native Japanese design powered by a license-built version of the German engine used in the Bf 109. When that discovery was made, the Ki-61 was given the code name “Tony.”

3. Watkins named his P-38 Charlcie Jean in his girlfriend’s (his future wife’s) honor.

1. “Captive” was the 9th Fighter Squadron’s call sign in the air.

1. There were suggestions in postwar interviews with veteran Headhunters that Welch’s malaria attack was used as an excuse to get him out of theater. He had earned few friends over the past months and alienated many of the old hands in the 80th Fighter Squadron with his behavior.

1. A chandelle is a climbing turn. Japanese pilots used sudden, steep chandelles to avoid the slashing attacks they endured at the hands of American pilots, usually hoping to pull around and get a snap shot off on the American fighter as it extended away.

1. When Gerald took over the squadron, Lidstrom become his XO and Wally took the operations officer (S3) slot. They formed the core leadership for the Knights going into the fall’s brutal battles over Rabaul.

1. “Light bird” was slang for lieutenant colonel.

2. Missions were assigned to the squadrons from the top down. V Fighter Command would be given a list of missions to support, aircraft to escort, and they would task the available squadrons accordingly. Usually, if a squadron wanted to run its own mission—say a search for a downed pilot—V Fighter Command would be notified and the mission cleared. That way, those in V Fighter Command HQ could see the status and number of available planes at any given point during any given day. If a crisis emerged, such as a surprise incoming Japanese raid, V FC could flex to meet the threat based on the aircraft available. It is unclear whether Kearby notified V FC of his freelance missions, but from the available evidence it looks unlikely. At times that fall, he took pains to cover up what he was doing and where he went.

3. Putting the sun to your back was an old World War I trick Kearby no doubt learned about as a kid when he was obsessed with the aces of the Western Front. This was not a tactical detail that pops up much from other American combat reports in New Guinea, but Kearby used every possible advantage, including this one. A plane diving out of the sun is exceptionally difficult to detect due to glare, so it was an effective way of achieving complete surprise.

4. From the available evidence, it seems most likely he went with the 1st Provisional.

5. This mission was the only one in which the 1st Provisional is mentioned in any V Fighter Command records. Its presence on this mission, combined with later ideas suggested by Kearby to Whitehead and Kenney, may have set the stage for the much more famous Flying Circus that came into being briefly in early 1944.

1. Don Good was Gerald’s old friend from Eugene. Don had briefly dated Barbara before she met Gerald, taking her to a dance at the U of O. In June 1943, he suddenly appeared in Gerald’s tent, having heard through the grapevine about his fellow Oregonian across the runway from the 3rd Attack Group.

1. The death of Stanley Johnson was a terrible blow to the squadron’s opinion of Richard Bong, and the black mark of so many lost wingmen would haunt him for the rest of his career. Postwar, most of the guys glossed over the rift, not wanting to cast aspersions on a national hero. They also were proud of the fact that the ace was part of their heritage and accomplishments. Off the record, however, some talked in their last years about the resentment and fury felt by some pilots over what happened in those final months of his first tour.

1. Every secondary source consulted for this book places Tom Lynch back in theater in either January or February, as that’s when he and Bong were reunited and started making headlines. However, Lynch actually returned to Australia in November, flew a B-25 up to Port Moresby on December 4, 1943, from Townsville, then spent December 6 and 7 checking out at Moresby in P-47s. His Form Five flight records document this. It is significant in that he very well should have taken over the 39th again as Charlie King was heading home. His arrival was perfect timing. Yet, he was pulled out of his unit by the acting commander of V FC, which looks suspiciously like Kearby administratively sidelined his biggest rival in the ace race.

1. Some postwar historians have written that Bong, Lynch, and Kearby were all pulled into V Fighter Command HQ by Kenney to “audition” for top ace status and allowed to freelance at the higher HQ simply to rack their scores up. The truth is more nuanced. By the time the Circus stood up, Kearby was off with the 308th and was no longer assigned to V FC HQ. Kenney was doing his best to utilize Kearby while minimizing his opportunities to get into dogfights, while Lynch and Bong were marking time while waiting for the planes and pilots to be available for the full Circus squadron.

2. On the seventeenth and nineteenth, the two days Bong flew these lone wolf patrols, there were no other V Fighter Command squadrons assigned to Tadji as a target. The P-38s were all tasked with missions elsewhere.

1. Somehow, in most postwar accounts of this bizarre episode, Lindy’s presence in New Guinea was totally mischaracterized as his effort to help extend the range of the V Fighter Command squadrons. That was never even on Lindy’s radar when he first got into theater, but when the opportunity came up to show the pilots how to better manage their fuel, it became his excuse to get back to the front lines once he was pulled out and sent to Australia the first time. That nuance has been missed over the years, and as a result, Lindbergh’s trip to New Guinea has been cast as an altruistic effort to help Kenney’s men better fight the Japanese.

1. Tommy had a history of not dropping his tanks if he encountered enemy opposition before reaching the target area. At least one other time, P. J. Dahl recalled that happening. As a squadron leader, McGuire had to balance the intent of the mission with the nature of the threat faced en route. Lose that extra fuel early on, and it could compromise the mission. Other Americans might die downstream, especially if they were on an escort mission. Of course, none of those factors was in play during the final moments of McGuire’s life. As a result, there has been considerable criticism aimed at Tommy for not dumping their fuel tanks. Weaver never heard McGuire’s radio call to hold on to them. In reality, it didn’t matter if Tommy ordered that or not. The engagement started so quickly, nobody had time to properly go through the many steps required to get the tanks off the hardpoints. For one thing, to skin them, the P-38 pilots had to be flying straight and level. Two seconds from first sight of the Ki-43, all four P-38s were maneuvering wildly. It was a terrible situation. If Tommy did issue that order, he did it for one of two reasons: either he wanted the fuel so they could continue their patrol to their briefed destination and figured they would make short work of the Ki-43, or he recognized the danger the Ki-43 presented to any of his men who tried to level out and release the tanks in the middle of that point- blank dogfight and wanted to keep them as safe as possible. Whatever his motive, he took it with him, and speculating on it as many have done over the years serves no purpose.